I really love visiting the zoo because I rarely see any animals in my normal daily life, except for the squirrel that likes to bounce around outside of office window. This past weekend, Boston experienced some incredible weather and I had to shoot something! Please I bought a new camera and lens over the weekend that I was dying to try out! We ended up going to the Stone Zoo in Stoneham. Boston is interesting in that it has two zoos, and the animals are different at each zoo. So essentially you have to pay twice the admission to see all the animals. Sneaky!

The Stone Zoo made headlines a few months back when Massachusetts had some budget issues, and the PR team at the zoo thought it would be a good idea to shock taxpayers by releasing a statement that they would be forced to euthanize some of the animals if they didn’t receive enough funding from the state. They later apologized for the stunt, and thank goodness no animals were harmed during their prank. That peaked my curiosity, so I decided we should make a trip to the zoo and see what all the fuss is about.

The zoos that I’ve been to have all been pretty nice: San Francisco Zoo, San Diego Zoo, and the National Zoo in DC. The Stone zoo is a bit run down and much smaller in comparison. Also, the weather is a lot colder, so many of the tropical animals are living in cramped indoor conditions with spartan decor. There are a lot of North American and Himalayan animals which are used to cold weather, and their outdoor space was a lot larger. Some animals get all the luck!

Here’s Rudolph the regular-nose Reindeer

I love the color of flamingos.

It is sad sometimes to read about a certain species, like monkeys, who like to socialize in large groups, but when you go to the zoo, there’s always a lone monkey. It’s almost like putting them in solitary confinement, which is cruel to an animal that socializes a lot. I think zoos should adopt a policy to have at least two of every animal if they are social creatures.

This jaguar walked right up to me! Thank goodness there is a thick piece of plexiglass between me and him. Then this cute little kid asked his mom if the glass could break, and she said it shouldn’t. Then she turned to me and asked me if I remember the San Francisco Zoo incident where the tiger attacked and killed someone. Ha, at this point I’m questioning whether that plexiglass does hold or not. I slowly move to the next animal…

I’m not sure why this exhibit is so dark. Wouldn’t they want lots of sun because they are tropical animals? The only thing they had was this skylight, and you can tell they really want to be in the sun.

Speaking of animals basting in the sun, the black bears were loving it! I know there’s so much glare and reflection in this photo from other people’s clothing, but it was one of the most popular animals at the zoo. They were sitting right next to the glass and enjoying all the attention.

Ooh a cougar. He doesn’t look so scary, ha. I was pretty happy that most of the animals were awake when we went. Usually when you visit the zoo on a summer afternoon, the animals are almost always napping.

Coyotes don’t look that scary either. He just looks like a really big dog.

This is who Apple named its latest operating machine after: the snow leopard.

I forgot the name of this bird, but he’s somewhere from the Himalayas. He was very curious about my camera!

This is one of my favorites of the day. They built some big rocky hills for the Himalayan mountain goats, called markhors.

Kristen and John are a sweet couple, and we had a ton of fun during their engagement session. They are getting married in New Jersey, but they live in Boston, so they decided to have their engagement photos done here. It ended up being fr-eee-zing and windy on the day of their shoot, but they braved the cold, and we shot the entire session outside! We started in the North End, which was so fun. I probably could have shot the entire shoot in the North End (for you non-Bostonians, that’s Little Italy), but we walked to Faneuil Hall, then ended at the waterfront. I am so lucky to photograph such a beautiful and fun couple! It was definitely hard to pick out some of my favs for the blog because I have so many!

We started in a park in the North End, which had a great view of Boston.

I’ve only been to the North End at night, so I didn’t know that Boston has horse-drawn carriages. We saw a few of them during the engagement session, but we didn’t see any riders. Perhaps everyone was at home gearing up for the Superbowl!

One of my favs of the day! I saw this sign, and I knew I had to get a shot of it!

These next two pictures show how crazy gorgeous Kristen and John are!

The best part about taking pictures in below freezing weather is that you get parks all to yourself!

I can’t remember what was so funny but Kristen’s laugh makes me smile! Did I mention how much I love this job?

I think this is my favorite shot of the day! I think Polo Jeans should use this photo for their next campaign!

Thanks for reading!

My guest post about working for Anne Ruthmann Photography during her Holiday Photo Booth is up on her blog! I helped Anne again this past Saturday at her Headshots for Haiti fundraiser and we were able to raise $400! Anne has such a giving heart, and it is really inspiring to see photographers strive to give back. Right now she’s currently accepting intern applications, and if you’re a photography student, you need to apply! Anne is a fantastic mentor, and she’s also an incredibly awesome boss!!

I also just launched a Facebook fan page, so please visit and become a fan!

Last Sunday, I teamed up with Karman Lee Photography to take engagement pictures of her brother and future sister-in-law. They live in Connecticut but they drove down to Boston for an engagement shoot. It was pretty cold that day, but Shan Shan and Alex were troopers and even went without their coats for some of the shoot! In contrast, I had on a huge white down coat with an aviator type beanie to cover my head and ears. I look more like an eskimo than a photographer, haha, but love how it keeps me warm so I’m not shivering and making my photos blurry.

I am so excited to show off these photos! Aren’t they a gorgeous couple?! I love the outfit that Shan Shan wore too. The bright cheery colors almost made me forget it was the dead of winter! We started off shooting in the lobby at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, which is a really cool building. Then we walked around the waterfront. I’ve never been to that part of Boston before, so I loved this shoot because I got to the chance to explore! Thanks Shan Shan and Alex for braving the the cold with Karman and me!

To see more pictures, venture over to my website.

A bunch of people from my church organized a bowling night at Lanes and Games (at a real bowling alley, not Wii bowling), which was super fun. We went on a Friday night, and the place was packed with people. The first floor was all candlestick bowling, which I had never seen before (sorry no pic)! I found out later that it was invented in Massachusetts, and you use three balls per round instead of two. The game is much harder since the ball is tiny. so I’m not sure if that game is for me. I find bowling hard enough already, but I did bowl a 101 my first game, which is probably my highest score ever!

I find sports photography to be one of the most challenging events to photograph. I haven’t done much of it, so I thought it would be fun to bring my camera and try to shoot some action shots. There were definitely some times during the night where I was ready to throw in the towel because there was no way I would get clean shot, so I had to embrace the grain and the motion blur. I ran into some other problems. The lighting at the bowling alley was extremely uneven and there was also nowhere to stand. It’s not very flattering if you try to take action shots from behind the bowler. Luckily, when the people next to our lane finished their game, I was able to use their lane to take a few profile pictures of some bowlers until the next group started bowling. That was sweet, because then I was able to finally able to take some nice shots.

I ended up converting all the pictures into black and white, but I couldn’t decide on which to use, so I have different types of black and white. Some have a brown tint, and some are more contrasty than others. Enjoy!

It seems like more and more people are considering buying a DSLR, which is great to hear so many people are interested in getting more serious about their photography! I’ve been received a lot of DSLR related questions lately, so I thought I would blog about your photography questions in this post.

1.) What kind of camera should I buy?

Wow this is a hard question because it’s like asking what type of car you should buy. It’s really about personal preference and how much you’re willing to pay for certain features. There are two main manufacturers: Nikon and Canon. You can’t go wrong with either brand. The consumer cameras start at around $450, and the high-end professional cameras can set you back $6500. The basic consumer cameras are designed for beginners ($450-$800), and the controls are set up like a point-and-shoot camera, with pre-programmed settings. If you want fast control over manual settings like aperture and shutter speed, then the prosumer cameras ($800-$2000) may be right for you. They are a blend between the consumer and professional cameras, and the higher end prosumer cameras have better autofocus and are weathersealed. Anything about $2000 is reaching into professional camera territory, which is probably way more camera than you need for your first DSLR.

2.) Is the kit lens sufficient?

The trap that a lot of people fall into is that they think that the kit lens that comes with the camera will be sufficient. So they do extensive research and buy the most expensive camera they can afford, but don’t have any money left for lenses. Little do they realize that the kit lens is for general purpose photography, and to get amazing pictures, they will have to invest in more glass. When they finally start researching lenses, they are surprised to find that the really nice lenses costs more than their camera. Yikes! What to buy? If you are on a tight budget, at a minimum you should buy the 50mm 1.8 prime lens, which is usually around $100. This is a fixed lens, which means you won’t be able to zoom in and out, so you’ll have to do a lot of zooming with your feet to compose your shot. Another option is to buy used lenses, but inspect them carefully and try them out on your camera before buying.

3. Can you teach me how to use my camera?

First of all, I encourage everyone to first read their camera manual. Yes, the booklet that came with the camera that you ditched after page 10. If you can’t get through it, try reading 1-2 pages a day, and if you find it hard to understand, consider buying a third party manual like the Digital Field Guides or Magic Lantern Guides. They are usually easier to read through. If you still have a lot of questions after that, I’d be happy to help you out, but I know Nikons much better than Canon systems. If you don’t live in the Boston area, we can meet up next time I’m in your neck of the woods.

4. What kind of post-processing software should I buy?

This really depends on how serious you are about editing your photos. Once I found Lightroom, I’ve never looked back. It’s one of the best programs for managing your pictures and if you want more control over post-processing your photos. My favorite part is batch editing, where I make some changes to one image and then apply it to an entire set of images. It saves a ton of time if you are editing several hundred images from a photo shoot! I use Photoshop occasionally when I have to do some serious editing, but I find that Lightroom has most of the Photoshop features that I need. These programs are expensive and will set you back quite a bit. I’ve read that Photoshop Elements has 90% of the most used Photoshop features, and is also much, much cheaper, so Photoshop Elements should be sufficient for most photographers. I don’t know of any cheap alternatives to Lightroom sorry. Aperture (for Mac only) is slightly cheaper, but I didn’t like it as much as Lightroom.

This is my longest post ever, so thank you for reading! I hope this was helpful to some of you. If you have a question I didn’t answer, please post it in the comments section, and I’ll run another Q&A post if there’s interest!

Since this post wouldn’t be complete without pictures, here are some pictures of me [not pictured] making wontons taken with my 50mm 1.4 lens. The first picture is a snapshot of my assembly line: 1.) spoon the meat mixture on the wonton skins first; 2.) use a large brush to wet the ends of the wonton wrappers (if you have a wide enough brush, you can wet two wonton wrappers if you lay then side by side); 3.) fold them into triangles; 4.) bring the ends of the triangles together to form a Chinese gold ingot.

One of my new goals this year was to create a logo. I am happy to announce that it’s finally here! I worked with an awesome designer who created a logo that reflects me. I wanted a simple logo with a touch of color, and so I incorporated a leaf because nature is where I get my inspiration from. I’ve also changed the look my blog and my portfolio website, but I might keep tweaking them more if I can figure out how to rewrite the code.

We just had a very slushy storm, so here’s some pictures I took in the summer that hopefully will make you feel warmer. These are also some of the photos from Arts Night last weekend.